Many states have passed laws that mandate the use of a child safety seat for children up to the age of four years old. Since 1999 all new automobiles and light trucks produced in the United States have been equipped with passenger-side airbags because of a federal mandate.
Although child seat manufacturers routinely warn purchasers to secure the child safety seat in the center of the rear-seat when there is an airbag in the car, it is not uncommon for the safety seat to be placed in the front, passenger-side seat. Rear-facing infants in the back seat, when alone with the driver, often cause distractions that contribute to, or cause, crashes. A distressed infant alone in a safety seat in the back seat of a car is at least as distracting to the driver as a cellphone, a well-established and quantified distraction. In addition, recent Government data shows that in numerous rear-end crashes, front seats break and hurt, or even kill, children in the back seat. If not for passenger side airbag, for the sake of safety, rearfacing infants should be placed in the front seat to minimize distractions contributing to crashes and to allow for infant/driver eye contact thus adding to the infant""s feeling of security. In recognition of this fact, the U.S. Department of Transportation has recommended the installation of an airbag on/off switch in cars carrying infants or small children in the front seat. Still, there is risk to an infant in a rearfacing safety seat positioned in front of a passenger side air bag.
A significant body of data has shown that the interaction between a rear facing infant seat and a front passenger-side airbag can result in excessive head and chest acceleration, causing serious and perhaps fatal injury to the infant. For example, the airbag/seat interaction produces accelerations of an infant""s head exceeding 100 G""s at bag impact and Head Injury Criterion (HIC) values ranging from up to 3000 HIC. By contrast, rear facing seats not experiencing airbag interaction produce head accelerations of about 50 G""s and HIC values less than 1000 and generally around 650 when crash tested at a standardized test speed of 48 km/hr. The Child Restraint Air Bag Interaction (CRABI) task force recommends 390 HIC as the top acceptable number for infant safety. One reason that it has not been possible to meet the HIC recommendations is that current infant restraint systems use hard plastics.
Further research has shown that in some cases there is an interaction between the rear facing infant seat installed in the back seat and a front passenger seat back. In the case of a rear collision, the impact causes the front passenger seat to collapse and come in contact with the infant seat, transmitting forces that need to be cushioned. Such forces can be greatly increased by the presence of a passenger in the front passenger seat
Infants are usually transported in rear facing car seats and in many cases, it is desired to transport the infant to other locations such as a grocery cart, restaurant, etc. A handle is usually incorporated in the cradle to facilitate removal of the cradle from the car seat and to provide a convenient way to carry the cradle. Current methods to transport the infant have required removing the entire seat as one piece or have required that the cradle first be released from the frame using releases on both sides of the cradle and then the cradle be lifted from the frame. These motions have been awkward for parents.
It would therefore be desirable to provide an infant child safety seat that will protect the child when the safety seat is installed facing rearward in any seat in a vehicle, whether or not equipped with a passenger side airbag. The cradle should be easily removed from the car seat base, have an ergonomically designed handle and provide a infant safety seat that limits the shock transmitted to a child in the case of an impact.
The present invention improves upon previous attempts to overcome the disadvantages and dangers described above by providing improved occupant protection in all vehicles, with particular enhancement in vehicles equipped with a passenger-side airbag. The infant safety seat base includes a canopy to deflect an expanding air bag away from the infant and dissipate both the air bag and any impact energy.
The canopy further incorporates a shock absorbent foam barrier to absorb a significant portion of the deceleration and/or shock energies that might harm the child. The canopy is integrated with a base allowing the remaining energy to be dissipated by the base components by both deforming and by moving the base. The base includes a suspension system that suspends the cradle limiting the transmission of force between the base and the cradle. The suspension system includes a set of shock absorbers, where the front shock absorbers are identical and the rear shock absorbers are identical, but the front and rear absorbers differ in stiffness. The difference in stiffness is chosen to allow the installed cradle to rock toward the back canopy in response to an impact on the canopy.
The infant cradle is held in the base suspension assembly by a latching mechanism using gravity for engagement and using a single-handed release mechanism. The mechanism uses jaws that grip a structural element holding a handle to the cradle. The latching mechanism opens when the cradle is placed on the paws of the jaws and grips the structural element when the element has passed the paws. The single-handed release allows a person to release and lift the cradle without stretching across the seat to access the release mechanism because the release is operated from either side of the cradle and incorporates interlocks. The interlocks must be engaged prior to the release.